Aimée Ferrand was now fifty-six. Her golden hair was streaked with grey; the pristine beauty of her face was beginning to crease. She was a woman unique because of the years she had spent in the harem of Bayazid II. Her two daughters, married to Turkish pashas, were called aunt by the new Sultan. Yet her love had always been constant for William Hawkwood, and now in the twilight of her years she had found a very real happiness.
Partly because of the woman with whom she shared management of Hawk Palace, even as she shared the bed of Hawk Pasha himself, Giovanna’s life had hardly been less tumultuous. She was more fortunate over the years in having been able to spend so much of it close to William Hawkwood, and had learned to love him even more than her first husband, who was Harry’s father.
Harry Hawkwood had little hope of ever achieving such domestic triumph: no beautiful French or Italian captive had ever drifted into his orbit. Thus he had accepted the Turkish view that one’s women were for pleasure and child-bearing. A man had more important things in his life to concern him.
Harry had always been a soldier. He had ridden at William Hawkwood’s side from the age of sixteen, firstly as a rebel against Bayazid, and then as one of Selim’s most faithful followers. When he had returned home from campaigning, there had been much business to deal with, which had limited his visits to the harem. And also, in the last three years of unbroken peace, there had been his little yacht. Now…he would just have to build another one.
“I can see that you do not believe me, young Hawk,” Khair-ed-din said. “Would you like to see some of the treasure I have brought out of Russia?”
“I would rather go to bed, old friend. That water still strikes a chill to my bones.”
Khair-ed-din gave a bellow of laughter. “Why, so you shall go to bed, and be warmed. But first see what might warm you.” He rang the golden bell which waited on the table, and the door was immediately opened by a bowing eunuch.
The still-fresh breeze seeped into the cabin, rustling the drapes, reminding Harry that they were still at sea.
“Fetch me the two pale women,” Khair-ed-din said. “And that fellow Ivan.”
The eunuch bowed again and left.
“Pale women?” Harry asked. “Circassians?”
For his uncle also possessed a Circassian concubine, a massive yellow-haired woman called Golkha. Golkha had no doubt warmed William Hawkwood once upon a time, but now she was an undulating mass of fat, although good-humoured enough.
“No, not Circassian — from further north. They are quite remarkable, and I would have your opinion.”
The door flew open again as people were forced into the cabin. The two women, wrapped in voluminous if torn and threadbare cloaks, were each manhandled by a eunuch. Behind them came a thin man, also in a tattered cloak and with manacles on his wrists.
“This fellow speaks Greek,” Khair-ed-din explained. “His name is Ivan.”
Ivan bowed low before his captor.
Harry found himself staring at the women. For the moment all he could see were eyes gleaming at him.
“Tell them to disrobe, Ivan,” Khair-ed-din commanded.
Ivan spoke in a quite unintelligible language.
“It is a barbaric tongue, eh?” Khair-ed-din commented.
One of the women replied in a low voice, while Ivan argued with her.
“Tell them that if they do not obey, I will have them stripped and given to the galley slaves,” Khair-ed-din said. He winked at Harry. “I would not, of course; they are far too valuable. Watch, now.”
The threat produced its effect. The two women shrugged their cloaks from their shoulders and let them fall to the ground.
Beneath they were naked, with strong, voluptuous, very pale bodies, and Harry did not suppose they were more than fifteen or sixteen years old. But entrancing as were the rounded breasts and smooth bellies, he was more taken with their hair. It was a wild yellow-brown mass of curls which tumbled down past their shoulders to the middle of their backs. Their faces were curiously strong, with high cheekbones and powerful jaw-lines yet remarkably attractive in conjunction with their straight noses and full lips and burning amber eyes.
“I would say there is Tartar blood there somewhere,” Khair-ed-din remarked, “but it is well diluted. Are they not a handsome pair?”
“Indeed,” Harry agreed.
“They are sisters, I believe. What are their names, Ivan?”
The Russian bowed again. “My lord, their names are Yana and Roxelana.”
Khair-ed-din glanced at Harry slyly. “I can see you are interested. Would you like to take one of them?”
Harry stared at the girls — and they stared back. No doubt he was the most outstanding man in the cabin; if his hair and beard were almost as red as Khair-ed-din’s, he was twenty-five years younger.
“One of these could warm your blood for you.” Khair-ed-din suggested.
“If she did not scratch my eyes out first,” Harry said. “How much?”
“For you, my friend?” Khair-ed-din shrugged. “Fifty dinars.”
“Fifty dinars? That is a great deal of money for an unintelligible woman.”
“But not unintelligent, young Hawk. That is the important factor. I took these from the tent of a chief. I killed him with my own hands. These girls are of the best stock, and they will learn. At fifty dinars, each is a snip.”
As Harry surveyed the girls further, he realised that Khair-ed-din could be right. There was certainly intelligence in the eyes glaring back at him. Angry intelligence, to be sure: they had recently seen their father and, no doubt, their mother and their brothers murdered so that they could enter a Turkish harem. But a great many female slaves acquired in such unfortunate circumstances had yet proved the chief adornment of the harems in which they later found themselves.
“You are right,” he agreed. “Very well, Khair-ed-din, I will take them both, since they are sisters.”
“Well, now, you are a glutton,” the pirate declared. “No, no — only one of them.”
“You do not think I can handle both?”
“My dear Hawk, I am sure of it. But one of these is a present for Ibrahim, which I promised him before I left Constantinople. Bring me a Russian, he commanded. I long to lie with a Russian.” Khair-ed-din shrugged. “Who am I to gainsay the Grand Vizier? But I am now giving you first choice, because you are my friend.”
Despite his name, Ibrahim was a Greek and few of the Turks actually liked him. He was an excellent man of business, and ran the empire effectively for his indolent master, Sultan Suleiman II — but he was nonetheless a Greek, and the conquering Turks resented having one of a conquered race set above them. Yet he was a friend of Hawk Pasha, who was also an infidel.
Harry Hawkwood carefully studied the girls. Although they were clearly sisters, he estimated that there was some considerable difference in their characters.
Roxelana stood absolutely straight, her high breasts heaving, as she breathed, her muscles twitching with suppressed energy, her eyes flashing fire. She would have to be conquered again and again, perhaps over some considerable time.
Yana projected much less aggression. She too breathed deeply, aware that her fate was being decided, but her expression was more anxious than defiant. She was also, marginally, the more lovely of the two.
Harry Hawkwood was all for a quiet domestic life.
“I’ll take Yana,” he said finally.
*
Khair-ed-din’s squadron was in the Golden Horn an hour later. There Harry was told by the captain of the port to report immediately to his father’s house outside Galata. Everyone had supposed him drowned in the storm, and besides there were great deeds afoot. So the captain said.
Harry bade Diniz follow with his new purchase — he had given Khair-ed-din a promissory note for her — and hurried ahead, leaving the great walled city, huge and bustling, behind him. Here on the north bank of the famous harbour the suburbs extended further as the Ottoman wealth grew and grew, and as Constan
tinople expanded in worldwide importance.
The crowning achievement of the reign of Selim the Grim had been the capture of Baghdad and of the Caliph himself. Caliph Mutuwakkil had been brought to Constantinople a captive, and had died there. Selim had then announced that henceforth the Ottoman Sultan would be Caliph: the spiritual as well as military head of the entire Muslim world.
And there had been none to defy his word.
*
Of all the many palaces which adorned the Galata shore, none equalled that of Hawk Pasha. It had been built by Anthony Hawkwood in the days of his intimacy with Mahomet the Conqueror, and embellished by William Hawkwood in the days of his intimacy with Selim the Grim.
A horse had been provided by the captain of the port, and Harry spurred it up the road, his heart pounding with a thousand apprehensions. Slaves hurried forward to grasp his bridle and assist him to the ground, gaping at his seeming undress, for Khair-ed-din had lent him a kaftan many sizes too small.
Running into the marble hallway, he encountered Aimée. However much the Hawkwoods had adopted Turkish habits, there was yet no harem in William Hawkwood’s palace: the women of the house were free to come and go as they pleased. He did not fear that any of them would try to escape.
“Harry!” she cried. “We have been so worried. Your mother is quite distraught.’
Harry kissed her hand. “It was a sudden squall. I lost the boat and two good men.”
“But not yourself.” She squeezed his fingers.
Harry turned to greet Giovanna, hurrying from the centre courtyard. Two years older than Aimée, at fifty-eight Giovanna Hawkwood was no less compelling in personality, even if she too revealed signs of age. Her once-tawny hair was now streaked with grey.
“Harry, my love, your uncle is in a rage, and wishes to see you on most urgent business.”
Harry embraced his mother. “I shall go to him immediately. But I am safe, Mother. Does that not please you?”
Giovanna’s eyes filled with tears. “Is there anything could please me more? Now haste, and beg Hawk Pasha’s forgiveness.”
Harry hurried to the door of his uncle’s office, knocked and entered.
Seated at his desk, William Hawkwood looked up and frowned. Hawk Pasha was sixty-six years old now, and had travelled and campaigned almost every year of his adult life.
“Your mother supposed you dead,” he remarked gruffly.
“Fortunately she was wrong, Uncle,” Harry said, closing the door. He spoke in English, as William Hawkwood insisted whenever they were alone together. As no one else in the house, indeed scarcely anyone in all Constantinople, knew the language, their conversations were thus ensured a most complete privacy.
“So I see. Sit down.”
Harry lowered himself into the chair before the huge desk littered with maps and reports. He could tell that something significant was indeed afoot.
“That would have been a waste,” Hawk Pasha remarked, “when there is so much to be done. The Pope has preached a crusade against us, and Louis of Hungary has raised an army. My reports say it numbers twenty thousand armoured knights, and God alone knows how many men in total.”
“But there has been no declaration of war?”
“Does he need one? Whatever he does will have been sanctioned by the Pope.” William hated the Papacy with good reason — even if Rodrigo Borgia was now only an infamous memory. “They will have been preparing this since the death of the Sultan.”
Like many of his fellow pashas, William Hawkwood still referred to Selim as “the Sultan”.
There was no man alive who could remember Mahomet the Conqueror, though the fact that he had been rightfully named was in evidence every time any Ottoman stepped out on to the streets of Constantinople. But Mahomet had been a many-sided genius, a man for whom warfare and conquest had been a means to an end. A man who would as soon write a couplet of poetry and design a beautiful house as set loose an arrow.
There were too many men who remembered the indolent excesses of Mahomet’s successor, Bayazid II, when the reputation of Turkish arms had sunk to its lowest ever level. Thus the glory of Selim’s reign had also been an epoch to remember. Too short an epoch for the soldiers, to be sure. He had deposed his father in the year 1512, and he himself had died only eight years later. But what triumphs he had achieved in that short span!
He had begun by declaring war on Shah Ismail of Persia, ostensibly for supporting his brother Ahmed, but principally because the Persians were Shi’ites and Selim was a fanatical Sunnite. On 23 August 1515, the two armies had met at Chaldiran, and Ismail had been defeated in one of the bloodiest battles in history. A fortnight later Selim had taken the Persian capital of Tabriz. In the course of the campaign he had put forty thousand Persians to death — merely for being Shi’ites. Not for nothing was he called Selim the Grim.
Harry Hawkwood had marched with his army, and fought in that battle. The Sultan had then wanted to continue his advance, following the route of Alexander the Great into India. But his men, and principally his Turkish light cavalry, had refused to follow him on so unlikely an adventure. The Sultan had thus turned aside and conquered the middle Euphrates. It was on that same campaign that he had captured Baghdad and the Caliph.
Following this victory he had been attacked in the west by the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, Kansu al-Gauri. Selim had never doubted that the Mamelukes would prove his most severe antagonists; for these had been precursors of the Janissaries — the word mameluke meaning owned men, or slaves — and they had first been raised by the immortal Saladin to become the most formidable fighting men in the Arab world. They had been the only military force ever to defeat Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Themselves of Turkish origin, they had exercised control over the Arab countries, and even the Caliphate, electing and deposing caliphs and sultans as they chose.
Selim had advanced so rapidly into Syria that the famous Mameluke cavalry had been overwhelmed at Merj-Dabik, a battle fought and won in less than an hour. In that hour, however, Kansu had died and his army had been destroyed.
Selim had then invaded Egypt itself. At the battle of Ridanieh, on 22 January 1517, he had routed the army of Kansu’s nephew and successor, Touman Bey, and subsequently executed him. By the end of that year the Ottomans had occupied Mecca and the Caliph had been transferred to Constantinople. When there were religious outbreaks against such sacrilege, Selim had put these down with a ruthless ferocity that had terrified both friend and foe.
On all of these campaigns, Hawk Pasha and his nephew had ridden at the Sultan’s side; in one five-year period Harry had scarcely slept five nights in his own bedchamber. And the path of conquest had seemed never-ending. In 1520 Selim had begun to prepare an immense expedition against the island of Rhodes and its defenders, the Knights of St John. He had no Constantinople to set up as the ultimate target of his life. But Rhodes had been the one objective in which Mahomet the Conqueror had been defeated. Its capture would set the seal on Selim’s own fame as the greatest of Ottoman soldiers.
By the end of the summer the expedition had been ready; it was just a matter of giving the word to sail. Harry had been convulsed with excitement; at last he was going to campaign across water. Out of the coming events he might influence Selim to undertake further naval expeditions — to the West.
But, on 22 September 1520, Selim the Grim had died.
***
The world had breathed a gentle sigh of relief, in every way. Because, unlike events following the sudden death of Mahomet, or preceding the deposition of Bayazid, there had been no clash at all, no civil war as the new Sultan had taken his place. For Selim had not spent enough time at home to father more than a single son.
Harry had first met Suleiman when he had been nineteen years old, and the prince two years younger — on the day William Hawkwood had abandoned his revolt and agreed to fight for Selim. For a brief while the two young men had become intimate friends while they campaigned with their illustrious fathers.
B
ut since Selim’s death they had drifted apart. This had been inevitable: it is easier to be friends with an heir apparent than with a monarch. But there had been other reasons, particularly the striking differences in their characters. Where Harry regarded life as a series of challenges, to be met with brute force and cold steel, Suleiman increasingly revealed a reflective, even a studious cast of mind. This had aroused considerable alarm among his great pashas, who remembered too well the indolence and vices of Bayazid.
But they had soon realised that their fears were groundless. Suleiman was indeed studious, but he entirely lacked vice. If he preferred discussing the anyi with his imams and muftis to galloping into battle, his personality was if anything too gentle for the cruelty of uncertainty. If, by force of custom, he maintained a harem, it was well known that he habitually slept with just one girl. She had the same name, Gulbehar, as his own grandmother, and had already fulfilled her essential duty by bearing her master a son, Prince Mustafa.
Above all, he did not interfere with his late father’s military plans. Indeed, he added some of his own; within a year of succeeding to the sultanate he sent a small army, commanded by Hawk Pasha, on a sudden campaign to the west, ostensibly at the invitation of certain Hungarian magnates discontented with the degeneracy of government since the death of Hunyadi. The principal achievement of this campaign had been the capture of Belgrade; so sudden had been the appearance of the Turks that the city had been hardly defended. The White City of the Serbs, it was another stronghold to have repulsed the Conqueror, as it had repulsed his father Murad. In fact Mahomet had not pressed the siege with any great vigour; Belgrade being on the very limits of his empire. Yet in capturing the town Hawk Pasha had made the name of the young Suleiman resound throughout the Western world.
Meanwhile Suleiman had carried forward his father’s purpose against Rhodes. When Hawk Pasha and his subordinate commanders had landed on the island on 25 June 1522, the Ottoman force had numbered a hundred thousand men; in the course of the siege this number was doubled.
What followed had been an epic encounter reminiscent of the siege of Constantinople itself. The Knights of St John had numbered only seven hundred, supported by six thousand auxiliaries and several batteries of artillery. Their commander, the Grand Master Philippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam, had refused to surrender and had fought for six months with a courage and determination even the Turks could admire. During that time every device known to warfare was employed, from bombardment to mining. Great breaches were smashed in the walls, and the Turks had swarmed to the attack, only to be repulsed time and again with enormous slaughter. As with Constantinople, the slightest effort on the part of the great nations of Christendom could have saved the day; surely the combined fleets of Spain and Genoa would have destroyed the Turkish galleys and left the Ottoman army stranded like cut flowers in a vase. But Charles V of Spain and the Empire were too busy fighting Francis I of France.
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